NAME

Moose::Manual::Contributing - How to get involved in Moose

VERSION

version 2.0205

GETTING INVOLVED

Moose is an open project, and we are always willing to accept bug fixes, more tests, and documentation patches. Commit bits are given out freely, and the "STANDARD WORKFLOW" is very simple. The general gist is: clone the Git repository, create a new topic branch, hack away, then find a committer to review your changes.

NEW FEATURES

Moose already has a fairly large feature set, and we are currently not looking to add any major new features to it. If you have an idea for a new feature in Moose, you are encouraged to create a MooseX module first.

At this stage, no new features will even be considered for addition into the core without first being vetted as a MooseX module, unless it is absolutely 100% impossible to implement the feature outside the core.

If you think it is 100% impossible, please come discuss it with us on IRC or via e-mail. Your feature may need a small hook in the core, or a refactoring of some core modules, and we are definitely open to that.

Moose was built from the ground up with the idea of being highly extensible, and quite often the feature requests we see can be implemented through small extensions. Try it, it's much easier than you might think.

PEOPLE

As Moose has matured, some structure has emerged in the process.

Contributors - people creating a topic or branch

You.

If you have commit access, you can create a topic on the main Moose.git repository. If you don't have a commit bit, give us your SSH key or create your own clone of the git://git.moose.perl.org/Moose.git repository.

These people are the ones who have co-maint on Moose itself and can create a release. They're listed under "CABAL" in Moose in the Moose documentation. They are responsible for reviewing branches, and are the only people who are allowed to push to stable branches.

BRANCH LAYOUT

The repository is divided into several branches to make maintenance easier for everyone involved. The branches below are ordered by level of stability.

stable/*

The branch from which releases are cut. When making a new major release, the release manager makes a new stable/X.YY branch at the current position of master. The version used in the stable branch should not include the last two digits of the version number.

For minor releases, patches will be committed to master, and backported (cherry-picked) to the appropriate stable branch as needed. A stable branch is only updated by someone from the Cabal during a release.

master

The main development branch. All new code should be written against this branch. This branch contains code that has been reviewed, and will be included in the next major release. Commits which are judged to not break backwards compatibility may be backported into stable to be included in the next minor release.

rfc/*

Topic branches that are completed and waiting on review. A Cabal member will look over branches in this namespace, and either merge them to master if they are acceptable, or move them back to a different namespace otherwise.

topic/*

Small personal branches that are still in progress. They can be freely rebased. They contain targeted features that may span a handful of commits. Any change or bugfix should be created in a topic branch.

attic/*

Branches which have been reviewed, and rejected. They remain in the repository in case we later change our mind, or in case parts of them are still useful.

abandoned/*

Topic branches which have had no activity for a long period of time will be moved here, to keep the main areas clean.

Larger, longer term branches can also be created in the root namespace (i.e. at the same level as master and stable). This may be appropriate if multiple people are intending to work on the branch. These branches should not be rebased without checking with other developers first.

When your branch is completed, make sure it has been moved to the rfc/ namespace and is rebased on top of master, and ask for review/approval (see "APPROVAL WORKFLOW"). If it is approved, the reviewer will merge it into master.

No actual merging (as in a human resolving conflicts) should be done when merging into master, only from master into other branches.

APPROVAL WORKFLOW

Moose is an open project but it is also an increasingly important one. Many modules depend on Moose being stable. Therefore, we have a basic set of criteria for reviewing and merging branches. What follows is a set of rough guidelines that ensures all new code is properly vetted before it is merged to the master branch.

It should be noted that if you want your specific branch to be approved, it is your responsibility to follow this process and advocate for your branch. The preferred way is to send a request to the mailing list for review/approval; this allows us to better keep track of the branches awaiting approval and those which have been approved.

Small bug fixes, doc patches and additional passing tests.

These items don't really require approval beyond one of the core contributors just doing a simple review. For especially simple patches (doc patches especially), committing directly to master is fine.

Larger bug fixes, doc additions and TODO or failing tests.

Larger bug fixes should be reviewed by at least one cabal member and should be tested using the xt/author/test-my-dependents.t test.

New documentation is always welcome, but should also be reviewed by a cabal member for accuracy.

Failing tests are basically bug reports. You should find a core contributor and/or cabal member to see if it is a real bug, then submit the bug and your test to the RT queue. Source control is not a bug reporting tool.

New user-facing features.

Anything that creates a new user-visible feature needs to be approved by more than one cabal member.

Make sure you have reviewed "NEW FEATURES" to be sure that you are following the guidelines. Do not be surprised if a new feature is rejected for the core.

New internals features.

New features for Moose internals are less restrictive than user facing features, but still require approval by at least one cabal member.

Ideally you will have run the test-my-dependents.t script to be sure you are not breaking any MooseX module or causing any other unforeseen havoc. If you do this (rather than make us do it), it will only help to hasten your branch's approval.

Backwards incompatible changes.

Anything that breaks backwards compatibility must be discussed by the cabal. Backwards incompatible changes should not be merged to master if there are strong objections from any cabal members.

We have a policy for what we see as sane "BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY" for Moose. If your changes break back-compat, you must be ready to discuss and defend your change.

Release How-To

Moose uses Dist::Zilla to manage releases. Although the git repository comes with a Makefile.PL, it is a very basic one just to allow the basic perl Makefile.PL && make && make test cycle to work. In particular, it doesn't include any release metadata, such as dependencies. In order to get started with Dist::Zilla, first install it: cpanm Dist::Zilla, and then install the plugins necessary for reading the dist.ini: dzil authordeps | cpanm.

Moose releases fall into two categories, each with their own level of release preparation. A minor release is one which does not include any API changes, deprecations, and so on. In that case, it is sufficient to simply test the release candidate against a few different different Perls. Testing should be done against at least two recent major version of Perl (5.8.8 and 5.10.1, for example). If you have more versions available, you are encouraged to test them all. However, we do not put a lot of effort into supporting older 5.8.x releases.

For major releases which include an API change or deprecation, you should run the xt/author/test-my-dependents.t test. This tests a long list of MooseX and other Moose-using modules from CPAN. In order to run this script, you must arrange to have the new version of Moose in Perl's include path. You can use prove -b and prove -I, install the module, or fiddle with the PERL5LIB environment variable, whatever makes you happy.

This test downloads each module from CPAN, runs its tests, and logs failures and warnings to a set of files named test-mydeps-$$-*.log. If there are failures or warnings, please work with the authors of the modules in question to fix them. If the module author simply isn't available or does not want to fix the bug, it is okay to make a release.

Regardless of whether or not a new module is available, any breakages should be noted in the conflicts list in the distribution's dist.ini.

PROJECT WORKFLOW

For longer lasting branches, we use a subversion style branch layout, where master is routinely merged into the branch. Rebasing is allowed as long as all the branch contributors are using git pull --rebase properly.

commit --amend, rebase --interactive, etc. are not allowed, and should only be done in topic branches. Committing to master is still done with the same review process as a topic branch, and the branch must merge as a fast forward.

This is pretty much the way we're doing branches for large-ish things right now.

Obviously there is no technical limitation on the number of branches. You can freely create topic branches off of project branches, or sub projects inside larger projects freely. Such branches should incorporate the name of the branch they were made off so that people don't accidentally assume they should be merged into master:

git checkout -b my-project--topic/foo my-project

(unfortunately Git will not allow my-project/foo as a branch name if my-project is a valid ref).

BRANCH ARCHIVAL

Merged branches should be deleted.

Failed branches may be kept, but should be moved to attic/ to differentiate them from in-progress topic branches.

Branches that have not been worked on for a long time will be moved to abandoned/ periodically, but feel free to move the branch back to topic/ if you want to start working on it again.

TESTS, TESTS, TESTS

If you write any code for Moose, you must add tests for that code. If you do not write tests then we cannot guarantee your change will not be removed or altered at a later date, as there is nothing to confirm this is desired behavior.

If your code change/addition is deep within the bowels of Moose and your test exercises this feature in a non-obvious way, please add some comments either near the code in question or in the test so that others know.

We also greatly appreciate documentation to go with your changes, and an entry in the Changes file. Make sure to give yourself credit! Major changes or new user-facing features should also be documented in Moose::Manual::Delta.

DOCS, DOCS, DOCS

Any user-facing changes must be accompanied by documentation. If you're not comfortable writing docs yourself, you might be able to convince another Moose dev to help you.

Our goal is to make sure that all features are documented. Undocumented features are not considered part of the API when it comes to determining whether a change is backwards compatible.

BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY

Change is inevitable, and Moose is not immune to this. We do our best to maintain backwards compatibility, but we do not want the code base to become overburdened by this. This is not to say that we will be frivolous with our changes, quite the opposite, just that we are not afraid of change and will do our best to keep it as painless as possible for the end user.